Movie Nights
by Indigo Assassin
Summary: V certainly brings home an eclectic selection of films for movie night. Completed 12/21/11
1. Rocky Horror Picture Show

Movie Night

**A/N – This is only my second fanfic ever. I hope at least someone likes it and is awesome enough to review. Starts off drama-ish and possibly ridiculous and OOC, but then it get's (hopefully) funny and somewhat light-hearted, I PROMISE you!What I can't promise you'll is my ability to spell. =/**

**Disclaimer – The only thing V4V that belongs to me is a fairly purchased DVD. Everything else is Warner Bro. and Marvel Comics property. DON'T SUE ME!**

It had become a weekly occurrence in the Shadow Gallery – movie night. But it wasn't just any movie night. No, V wouldn't allow for just any movie to make it's way into their media player. Cult films. Black and whites. Swashbuckler and gangster movies. All of them blacklisted by Sutler. He prided himself on his most recent find; he had been searching for it for years, and now that he had it, sharing it with Evey would make his small victory all the more sweeter.

On the night in question, he had been away on what Evey had come to accept as 'vigilante business.' Truthfully, she would have much preferred 'vigilante business' to the day's affairs, but as long as his escapades remained out of the BTN news ticker and he came home in one piece, it didn't matter to either of them and they could continue on with their for the most part peaceful coexistence with each other.

It wasn't one of those days.

He had been in the middle of performing a small job really; the Ear had been setting up a new monitoring tower in Vauxhall that didn't need to be there. So, naturally, he felt it would better serve Londoners in a few thousand pieces. With explosives ready to go he had detonated the charge, but for all his speed and strength he could not escape some of the shrapnel that hurtled his way.

Evey would be furious.

He had just reached the roof of an adjacent building when he heard the first sirens, then the news chopper. Climbing and jumping from building to building, he made home quickly, but not in time to keep Evey from watching the tellie reports.

Disengaging the security system, he moved quickly and silently about the Gallery, listening and looking for any sign of Evey and what she might be up to. Content that she wasn't watching the news and probably off reading, he steeled himself away to his own quarters to inspect his injuries. With his tunic already ruined and bloody, he hastily ripped it off, revealing mottled red and white scars crisscrossing his body in various levels of severity. Upon inspection of his wounds, he found most to be superficial, but a few were certainly going to prove difficult to remove on his own.

For no more than a half second did he consider-no, he wouldn't, couldn't subject Evey to _that_. He had to do this alone. With a sense of dread at the task in front of him, he pulled a pocketknife and a lighter from his nightstand as well as a cloth to dampen any sound he would make. With the delicate fingers of a surgeon, one by one he pulled one, two, three, four bits of steel from his shoulders, groaning in agony as he cut the final piece out, but the worst was still yet to come.

Heating the knife over the lighter until it glowed red, he pressed the knife against the most horrific of the incisions, howling despite the cloth gag. Somewhere in the gallery he could hear porcelain shatter and footsteps racing across flagstone floors.

"V?" Came a whisper at his door, and he could hear the knob turning slowly…

"EVEY HAMMOND GET YOUR HAND OFF THAT DOOR!" He screamed as the knob shot back to its normal position as quickly as she had twisted it. "Go somewhere else, please," he weakly responded, rubbing his latest edition to his extensive burn collection.

"V? I heard you screaming!"

He slammed his nightstand drawer harder than needed, "I'll be out in just a moment." He said through gritted teeth. _Bugger it_, he thought, deciding to just sew and bandage the last few holes and take care of them later. It would be useless to keep her waiting. When he did not hear her walk away and leave him be he walked over and banged on the door, "Move, NOW."

She huffed a defeated sigh, and he knew it was off to the tellie room for her to wait for him. He was unsure of how much time had gone by once he had put in place the final suture. They weren't particularly neat compared to his usual handiwork, his right arm leaving something to be desired after cauterizing his shoulder wound which likewise made putting on a fresh shirt quite the challenge.

It was just as he left his room that he remembered his little gift to himself and Evey for the night. How well Evey would take it he couldn't be sure, he himself had never seen it, only heard about the stage performances that would be put on around Halloween time before England and the world went to hell.

He found her reclining on the couch watching the evening news. It didn't take the ever persistent blinking of the reporter for Evey to tell that the sudden implosion of a 'radio tower' was the result of a sinkhole. No, he was sure that his screams had left him thoroughly incriminated and undoubtedly the perpetrator.

She avoided looking at him as he placed the DVD in the media player and walked into the kitchen.

"Would you like anything, Evey?" he asked softly as he searched for a pot.

"No thank you, V." The clanging stopped and he sighed.

He was unsure of how to broach the subject as the movie trailers rolled along. "Evey-"

She cut him off abruptly with a scream, sending him sprinting into the tellie room. "My God that scared me!"

"What was it?"

Pale as a sheet, they both watched as a Monty Python trailer played across the screen while Evey caught her breath. "It was a shark, and it had this music, and then jumped out of the water and there was all this blood and…" she closed her eyes and shook her head like a child, but much more amusing.

"Sharks are extinct, Evey." He admonished. To prove her point, however, Evey pulled up the remote and re-winded it to the trailer of her fear, burying herself into the back of the couch as far as she could, almost as if it could protect her from a fictional shark. He did have to admit the music did give get to you, but the blood was entirely unconvincing and therefore ruined the horror aspect of the trailer.

"My dear Evey, I should think to be on the look out for this movie just for you react to it like this!" He laughed as he took his seat opposite to her on the couch.

She stared daggers at him, but it only made him laugh more, the sound echoing around the tellie room and Gallery as a whole. "Speaking about movie choices, you didn't tell me all week what we would be watching. _Is_ it a shark movie? I _will_ walk out right now if it is."

"Oh heavens no! But truthfully I'm not sure what genre you would label it."

"And by _it_ you mean…?" He put his finger to his lips to shush her, and no sooner had he done that that a pair of large, red lips appearing on screen. Evey snorted at the ridiculousness of it, and V was quite at a loss of what was going on, dutifully turning the Gallery lighting down so he could just barely make out the frame of Evey's honey curls beside him.

"V, what is this?"

Draping an arm across the back of the couch, he replied, "I am wondering the exact same thing Evey. Ah yes, the cult classic; The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

"Look how the dressed then. It's so strange." She couldn't help herself from giggling, and the sight of Brad's glasses sent her in to hysterics, "I mean, who wears horn-rimmed glasses anymore?"

"Apparently Brad Majors. Now hush, nymph!" He swatted playfully at her knee with his good arm.

It was easily the strangest movie either of them had ever seen. Evey, so absorbed in the movie had been startled several times by the easily startled Janet, each time inching closer and closer until she was practically wrapped around his arm.

"Is that man wearing _garters_?" She asked incredulously as Dr. Frank n Furter stepped out of the lift for his solo. A man in garters! She hadn't even seen that before the Reclamation. No wonder it found it's way onto Sutler's blacklist.

"I imagine by the time this is all over a man in leggings will mundane at most."

"I'm already pretty mind-fucked, V."

He looked down in shock at his petite and harmless Evey, but said nothing. Truthfully they both were and V was beginning to wonder if watching Jaws would have been a better idea.

He chuckled as the doctor beat Eddie to death with the ice pick, ignoring the look from Evey that seemed to say, "You have knives. You don't need any other sharp objects."

"Did he…?"

"Trick them both into sleeping with him," V finished almost to himself, "Yes he did." Never has he enjoyed being around Evey when such subject came up. He was fond of Evey; no mistake could be made in that regard.

He shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to think of where his thoughts threatened to away drift to, in response he received an irritated jab to his side. "You're fidgeting, V."

"Hmm." He gently poked back, smiling at how she shakes her head and gives up without much of a fight, focusing on a plot that he himself could make no sense of and doubted he ever would.

They remained in amicable silence for a long while, until Evey suddenly pointed out, "Is it just me or do you also think the guys are terribly ugly in this movie?"

"What was that?" Where in the world had that come from?

"Why are all the men so unattractive in this movie?"

"I really can't say, Evey. I'm not really interested in how men look."

She laid there against him, thinking, "What about the women?"

"I'm not one for women who look like raccoons." He received a very unlady-like snort from his elbow region in response and couldn't help but laugh. _Only his Evey_, he thought as she was sent into a giggling fit of her own over Rocky in his golden speedo. Soon they both erupted in absolute laughing chaos, his rich laughs reverberating against her as she lay against him.

"Do you wish to finish the movie, Evey?"

"Absolutely not! It's horrible! No wonder it's called the Rocky _Horror_ Picture Show!"

He didn't need to be told twice. With a flick of the remote the TV was frozen on Riff Raff chasing Rocky while the media player spat out the DVD into V's awaiting palm. He would keep it because it was a cult classic, but he resolved never to watch it again.

He turned to Evey, watching as she stood and stretched, mesmerized and captivated by the woman who stood before him. She was as relaxed as ever, not worried or angry or anxious. It was the one night he felt that their guards ever went down enough.

Never has he ever enjoyed the company of someone else as immensely as he does when Evey is around. He wonders what it would be like to be separated from her after so long in her presence. It is an uncomfortable thought for him to bear, and one that he would rather not think of.

"V, I think I'll go to bed now."

He nodded solemnly, "Sweet dreams, sweet Evey."

A smile touched her lips as she turned to walk towards her room, but she stopped and looked at him. "By the way, I'm not angry at you anymore." And with the final word, she left and all V could do was admire her from afar.

**A/N #2: I never finished RHPS either; it was just too oddball for me to even follow past 'Touch-A Touch-A Touch Me.'**


	2. Repo! The Genetic Opera

**A/N – Plenty of swearing and possibly bad British accents in this one. You have been warned! It's also not a very happy chapter and it's definitely very V-centric. R&R please!**

Chapter 2

Footsteps echoed deep in the vaults of the Ministry of Objectionable Materials, breaking a loud silence that often fell on places taboo in nature. Yet for Codename V, this was heaven. An entire library of books, films, music, and by far most importantly, art at his disposal, all of it hidden and marked to be destroyed by the totalitarian government that had ruled over Englanders for nearly twenty years.

Free to peruse the aisles in his Fingerman disguise at his leisure, he took his time as he would in any library, reading the occasional excerpt or two out of a leather bound book from time as volatile as the current. Many titles were duplicates of his own, but that was to be expected. Great thought alike and when the Finger came knocking, often the same books came out with their black-bagged owner.

_Common Sense_, he read, _blacklisted Nov. 2010 for inspiring treasonous and heinous thought. _He sighed, for the same could be said for most of the books in this vault. However, he was not here for books. No, a week had gone by and not a single movie had struck his interest to bring back to the Gallery.

He was just about to give up his search when a large crash brought his attention to the end of an aisle, reflexively pulling a semi-automatic pistol from it's holster at his waist, ready to attack if the need arise. He crept with the silence and speed that only genetic mutation could provide, sweeping his pistol up and down the back of the aisles until he was content that he was still alone.

Searching for the cause of the disturbance, he found a single DVD dated from 2008 laying face up on the floor, blacklisted in 2016 for '_sexual deviancy and explicit acts of violence_.' Sighing, he supposed he would give this one a shot, but he hoped that the 'sexual deviancy' was kept to a minimum.

Climbing the steps to the halls above, he secreted the DVD under his jacket and proceeded unnoticed out of the emergency exit, slipping into shadows as clouds began to unleash their wet fury over a wintery London.

Forced from his usual roof routes by intermittent bouts of lightning, he felt almost vulnerable, but not from an attack. Even in the dead of winter, Fingermen still prowled in full force, always 'combatting' curfew breakers in the streets past eleven.

With the tube station entrance within sight a little more than a hundred meters away, he contemplated running for it, but almost as the thought crossed mind, a bloodcurdling scream howled behind him, and then a gunshot. _Shit_.

He could see another Fingerman approaching him with a pistol raised. "Marcus?" he yelled. His eyes trained on V and his eyebrows quirked in query. _Who are you?_

"Right here, mate," came a voice behind him. "Who's this you got with you?" They both turned towards V.

"Vance." He said as smoothly as if it had been his given name, keeping his discomfort firmly under control as he flashed his black and red badge.

"Vance? Now there's a name. You fancy yourself good at keeping you're mouth shut?" Marcus e eyed partner almost suspiciously.

V put his hands in his jacket pockets and shrugged. "I don't really give a fuck, to tell you the truth, mate."

The Fingerman smiled, convinced that this new bloke would let him get away with his lascivious deed. "Right. Well, I'm sorry to say there's no ass in it for you, but I won't tell if you don't. England prevails."

"England prevails."

He waited for the two to wander off, not wanting to be in such close proximity to a kill. V however, wanted a good look at where the scream had come from. He found the woman who's scream had pierced the wet night behind a dumpster, still alive, though clearly not for much longer. Blood bubbled pooled slowly from the gapping chest wound that had been inflicted.

"P-p-please…" she gurgled, hands clawing at his chest as he watched the last moments of her innocent life fade away. Out of pity he reached out and compressed her carotid artery, letting her slip away into unconsciousness before death finally took her. It was all he could do.

With a furtive glance he dashed across the street to the tube station, on the home stretch at last.

Evey bolted upright from her dozing on the couch at the sound of the 'front door' clicking shut. She had tried earnestly to stay up and wait from him, but as the hours ticked by, her body revolted against her and left her a drooling mess on the sofa. Quick and heavy footsteps passed within arms distance of her, yet V hadn't even offered so much as a customary 'good evening.'

Old piping creaked above her; she heard the running of water coming from one of V's suites. The smell of dampness and rain wafted through the Gallery, and following on its heels was the smell of copper. Curiosity got the better of her as she stood and walked towards the exit. His Fingerman boots were placed in a tray by the door, dripping with watery blood needing to be scrubbed away later.

She often stood her after he would leave on his 'missions,' half waiting for his return and half wondering what would happen if she simply walked out the door into the unknown.

She didn't hear him as he crept silently behind her and placed his hand on her shoulder. "You wouldn't get very far, you know."

She raised a hand to strike his chest, and he batted it away easily with a solemn chuckle. "You scared me!" Honestly, the man could read minds!

"Yes, that does tend to happen often." He handed her the DVD case, "Have I managed to terrify you out of watching a horror movie this evening?"

"Depends; is it related to sharks?"

"No."

"Singing transvestites?"

He raised a finger about to speak, but dropped it. _Were_ there singing transvestites in this?

"Shall we find out?" He looped her arm around his elbow, escorting her towards the tellie room and away from the boots. Holding her close, V could feel raised goose bumps on her arms from the drafts that worked their way through the holes and crevasses of the walls. Without a thought he grabbed a red afghan from a lounge chair and handed it to Evey, receiving a quiet 'thank you' in return.

Popping the disc into the media player, V watched as Evey built herself a nest next to him on the sofa, draping his arm across the back of the chair as the opening trailers rolled, feeling Evey scoot closer to him.

He had to admit to himself that ever since Evey's arrive in the gallery, horror movies had become his favorite. Not because of the blood and death, his odd career of sorts had brought enough of that; no, it was because with every turn of a corner or scream of terror, Evey slowly scooted closer and closer to him as if he could provide protection of the horrors of the cinema screen without ever realizing it.

"Repo the Genetic Opera? Really V?"

"Have you seen it?" Though he highly doubted that.

She frowned, "Why was it blacklisted?"

"Scenes of sexual deviancy and explicit violent acts."

"How about just outright kookiness?" She said as a comic book style scene appeared on the screen. "Is it going to be like this the whole time?"

"I shouldn't think so seeing as the cover art features an actor dripping in stage blood." _Too much blood_, he thought, shaking the night's sorrows from his mind. Evey took it as a shiver and ignored it as a post apocalyptic plague world of death and horror was draw across the screen.

And then the singing started.

"V…" The vigilante pressed a gloved finger gently to her lips to silence her. "This isn't even a horror movie…" She groaned.

"Oh?" Then what was it supposed to be? There was plenty of blood in the first ten minutes, isn't that what made a horror movie.

"It's a slasher movie, V. There's a difference between slasher and horror."

"And what, pray tell, is the difference?"

"It's totally based on blood and gore but it's not even remotely scary. Just violent."

_Ah_, he thought. No matter, at least this movie seemed to have an understandable plot, unlike the previous week's feature film that left him quite at a loss for words.

For the better part of an hour, terrorist and captive sat in companionable silence, Evey flinching and V sitting stoically still when he might have chuckled as the Repo Man made quick work of all his victims. Several times Evey would look up at him, expecting a quip or two of his quirky humor, yet none came, and she had a vague feeling his lack of interest related to the boots by the door.

They watched on, V constantly tensing at the more _suggestive_ moments as she had come to expect. She wondered if he was like this before she had come along or if it was just his way of showing modesty. She also found he would 'coincidentally' pick at a loose thread or avert his mask from the TV whenever Pavi Largo took to the screen wearing the flesh faces of his victims. For no more than a flash she saw that he too had severe burns across his face. _Poor V_, she thought, squeezing his knee without realizing it.

The masked man glanced down for a moment before dropping his arm along Evey's shoulders, returning the gesture for reassurance though he didn't feel he deserved her concern in the least.

The film began it's decent towards the climax, Sarah Brightman's voicing Blind Mag in her final performance.

"I wish I knew what she was singing." Evey said with a small hiccup of despair into his shoulder. With the foreshadowing plain as day, they both knew how it would end but continued to watch the final sequence.

V looked over at the slow stream of tears sliding down her rosy cheeks before translating Mag's last song:

"_A long time ago _

_a fatal bird named Chromaggia_

_met the arrow of an archer _

_while flying. Along the lava coasts _

_for years, thinking it was being _

_chased it escaped the arrow_

_Chromaggia chromaggia _

_why don't you face danger? _

_the arrow was attached to its wing_

_and it flew trying to shake it off_

_Pulling the arrow _

_others get wounded because of me _

_Chromaggia, come take these eyes_

_I would rather be blind"_

"It's beautiful," she said in spite of her sadness.

"Yes."

Along came the epilogue and like the intro, Graverobber was there to sing the final words.

"Epilogue!" she bounced against him.

V jolted out of his own world at the sound, "What was that?"

"Oh, just adding to the chorus. See? Surgery, surgery." She said in tune with the screen as it faded to black.

"So I assumed you enjoyed tonight's selection."

"Umhmm."

His efforts validated, he stood and bade Evey a pleasant evening before walking off to his room, anticipating a torturous night.

**A/N #2 – So I chose 'Repo!' because 1. I LOVE it, and 2. there are a MILLION parallels that's I've found between several of the characters and V. **


	3. Kinky Boots

**A/N – Guess what? GORDON IS HERE! So far it's my favorite chapter, so please review for Gordon's sake if not for my own! Also, I'm assuming this takes place in the late 2030s based off of Valerie's story in the movie.**

* * *

><p>"…<em>another explosion was seen outside of the Tottenham nuclear plant early this morning as scientists worked to determine whether or not it could be salvaged. Experts anticipate that the clear zone will be expanded by-" <em>She flicked the TV off and continued on with her book, not interested in the BTN's usual fabrications.

_V_, Evey thought, _will you not stop until the entire infrastructure is reduced to rubble? _No matter, she thought; no longer were his doings her concern after the day she ran from Westminster Abbey in a frilly and very pink dress. Now safe in Gordon's home, she was bidding her time until…_until when?_

V was right when he had told her on the first day of her stay that leaving would simply be trading one prison for another, if she ever made it far enough to seek shelter in the first place. She couldn't open or stand near the windows and doors; she couldn't even go outside for fear of recognition.

Stuck in the cramped dwelling of her former boss, she passed time in the same way she had in the Gallery; reading, watching tellie, cleaning, but mostly wandering aimlessly looking for the masked vigilante she had spent two months living with, still wondering if he would simply pop out of a dark corner and whisk her back to the Shadow Gallery.

The lock to the front door clicked, and she scrambled into the chair furthest from the door just in case…

"Evey?" Gordon called as he secured the three dead bolts he installed the day after her arrival.

"Living room!" she hollered back, putting down her current read of 'Water for Elephants.' It wasn't all that interesting anyways.

Counting the ten paces it was from the living room to the doorway, Gordon popped his head round the corner with the rest of his frame following, grinning mischievously with his hands behind his back. _That could not be a good sign_, she thought.

"Evey."

"Gordon," playing his game. "How was your day?"

"Very productive," he said as he handed her the VHS tape he had hidden behind his back. "Would you care to watch it with me?"

Reading the title, she snorted and looked up at him, "Where…?"

"The vaults at the Ministry of Objectionable Materials." Hadn't she heard _that_ one before?

"You amaze me, you know that Gordon?"

"I daresay I do that may become a-" He was cut off by her groan of exasperation and gave her a questioning look for ruining his monologue.

"Sorry, you just remind me so much of _him_."

He looked down at her thoughtfully as he took a seat on the loveseat beside her. "It's not too late for you to just accept that I _am_ V, Evey. I do admit I have let myself go though…" He trailed off.

"That is _not_ funny, Gordon."

"I know, but will you still watch this with me? I promise that you will be utterly delighted."

"I suppose…" she rolled her eyes and noncommittally shrugged as she handed the tape back to him, not sure what to expect from a movie titled 'Kinky Boots.' "That's quite an ancient machine you have, Gordon," referring to the VHS player.

"I'm sorry I don't have the level of sophistication and resources as Codename V." he quipped back in his standard good-natured way. "Now, I also managed to walk out of work with a rather nice bottle of champagne that I having chilling right now and I would be most pleased if you would share it with me so I don't get drunk off my arse alone tonight."

She laughed wholeheartedly as he lifted himself off the sofa and headed towards the kitchen. "Pop the tape in the machine, will you Evey?" he asked through the pass-through, his head bent at an awkward angle from his great height.

Doing as she told, she heard the tinkling of crystal and the rustling of a bag being shoved in the microwave before Gordon came walking back out with the champagne bottle in an ice bucket.

"Popcorn and bubbly?"

"Don't knock it 'til you try it. I thought the exact same thing as you until my partner did it and I've loved it ever since." He said as his smile wavered for a moment.

"I'm so-"

"No, no!" he cut her off, "There's no need to apologize for something when you've done nothing!" The microwave dinged in the kitchen and Gordon was up and gone before Evey could argue further.

Returning with a hulking bowl of popcorn in his arms and restaurant portioned salt packets between his teeth, he plopped down and pointed to the boy walking across the pier in a pair of red heels, "Well, the lad is certainly a natural, wouldn't you say, Evey?"

She gave him a scrutinizing look and ignored the comment, dumping a salt packet on top of the popcorn. She eyed the champagne flute wondering how this would work out, watching Gordon raise his own in a silent 'cheers.' _Well, here goes nothing_, she thought, raising her own to his, her eyes glued to the screen as Charlie walked in on the drag show.

"You know," Gordon began, "I still remember the days when going to one of these shows was perfectly acceptable. You'd sit at a table, order a drink, might even have a family or kids sitting right next to you, and _no one_ in the world had a care."

"And then the world went to hell." She couldn't help but add in. She also remembered the 'good old days,' but from the innocent perspective of a seven year old girl who's childhood ended before it had really even begun.

Gordon gave her a sideways glance before smashing a handful of popcorn into his mouth, and for reasons unknown to him Evey was bent over laughing. _Did she get smashed_ this _easily_? "What?"

"Is that how you always eat?"

"Of course! How else do you expect me to maintain my figure?" Patting his stomach for emphasis.

"A strict exercise regiment to keep you in tip-top pyrotechnics sha-" she paused, "Oh no."

"What?"

She picked up the remote and rewound the tape, "There!" They watched as Simon, dressed in drag, dropped Charlie's prototype high-heeled boot right on top of the intercom button for the all the factory to listen to.

"I laid someone off like that once. On accident, of course."

"You're joking."

"No, I'm in television."

'_Sex shouldn't be comfy!_'

A look of horror crossed Charlie's face on the tellie just as it had Evey's, and Gordon burst out laughing until she joined in. "I'm glad someone shares the sentiment." He quipped at no one in particular, an awkward silence falling over them.

"Gordon," Evey began, "How did you know about…about what you wanted in life?"

He rested his champagne flute precariously on the arm of the sofa, crossing his legs with a thoughtful expression. "I suppose it all began when I came out of the womb. I looked back up at my mother and thought to myself, _'That's the last time I'm going up one of those,' _and now here I am." He tapped her knee. "Wait here."

She heard the cellar door open and the chink of the hidden door spring and wondered what in the world he was doing.

"Here we are," he came back with a fat brown leather bound book, "The woman who scarred me for life."

"She's beautiful. You have her eyes." And just about everything else, she thought looking at the brunette, blue-eyed woman holding a wailing Gordon.

He flipped forward a few pages, "My brother," he pointed to another infant, "Christopher Matthew Dietrich. Quite the howler when he was born."

As the pages went on, pictures of his mother and father became more and more scarce until there were none at all, leaving only the two brothers and an older man, standing-

"This is the house you grew up in?" He nodded, pointing to a man standing behind the two teens.

"My uncle Tom. Had this whole row built back in the eighties. He took us in after our parents died.

"Then when he died he left the house to my brother so he could build the secret cellar to hide his art and books."

"What happened to your brother?" she asked despite half knowing the back of her head.

"Taken to a camp along with my partner, here." Pointing at a tall black man, not unlike the main character of the movie they were no long watching. "I was away at university when they were taken. I didn't even know what had happened until I came home from holidays a month later. I thought they would come for me next and I waited aimlessly for the day the door would cave in, but it never came."

He gave a small laugh and showed her an enormous blow up of a picture where a floor had completely collapsed into a lower level. "What-?"

"Chris was a newly certified 'Civic Engineer' and removed a loadbearing wall out from under where you currently sleep at night." Sure enough, upon closer inspection she could see someone's head sticking out from the center of the hole, their face covered in soot and dirt, Gordon laughing merrily as his partner snapped the shot. "It took about three thousand pounds to fix but he still managed."

Evey couldn't help but stare at the man trapped between the floorboards. He looked to be about seven or so years younger than Gordon, with a large almost afro-like poof of brown hair and hazel eyes flecked with black. She wondered what would have become of him if he were still alive, and if he had as much as a magnetic pull in real life as he did in death.

Catching her staring, "Don't imagine what he was like in bed, Evey; he was possibly the most celibate man I've ever known." He watched her cheeks flush red. "Except of course for myself.

"You know what I miss the most about those days, Evey?" she shook her head. "Waking up in the morning and hearing Christopher playing his cello, never once playing something he hadn't created himself." He gave a rueful smile, eyes almost watering with the memory.

"Back to the movie, shall we?" dropping the scrapbook with an impressive 'thunk' to the coffee table. They had skipped over much of the movie in Gordon's trip down memory lane, and were now faced with Charlie trying to walk the catwalk of Milan in five-inch heels. It wasn't going very well.

"Oh no." Evey mutter as the popcorn ran out and Charlie slipped on the runway, not sure which one was more saddening. Luckily, it turned that Lola hadn't abandoned him after all, and brought his entire drag company along with him to save the show.

She couldn't help the few tears that fell as the credits rolled, and Gordon looked over and wiped a stray tear. "What?"

"I haven't seen a movie like this in months."

"Thank goodness. For a minute I thought I would have to put on a pantomime dame show to cheer you up."

She smiled earnestly, but gave a sudden yelp as the power suddenly cut out, plunging the living room into darkness and shadows.

"V!"

"Yes Evey?"

"Shut up Gordon."

* * *

><p><strong>AN #2 - So I would love to see some reviews :D**

** On a random tangent, I really think V would look somewhere along the lines of Adrien Brody had he not been burned. Just a thought...**


	4. Children of Men

Movie Nights

Children of Men

**A/N – This is where the story starts to deviate from the movie a bit. In the movie they didn't see each other 'til the fifth, but I've decided to change that up a bit AND I HAVE ADDED A SUBPLOT! **

Evey was looking through the new batch of fiction that had arrived that morning, a nonsense tune ambling though her head. It had been a pleasant day, not wonderful, not exciting, but not horrible. She trailed a finger along the spine of_ Twelfth Night _when a movement caught her eye. The door to the shop opened, the overhead bell tinkling as a young girl of about eleven in a pink sweater and pigtails hesitantly slid in. She looked up with expectant eyes, and Evey knew exactly what she wanted.

"Do you have anymore cans of red?" the young girl asked, anxiously shifting from foot to foot.

Evey nodded and walked behind the counter, shuffling a few boxes aside to reveal a crate of red spray paint cans, tucked away inconspicuously in a flat screen tellie box. Handing it over, she looked at the girl sternly. "Where did you get it?"

"Mister Coolie at the cinema."

Evey nodded. "Good girl. Off with you." The doorbell rang again as the girl scampered off, leaving Evey to continue searching through her new shipment box. _Lovely Bones, Joy of Cooking, Scarpetta_, all of them repeats, she sighed to herself. Pulling out the books, she found the false bottom her supplier would stick in all the crates. Beneath it could be anything-books, academic dissertations, journals, poetry, and by far her favorite, movies.

Feeling like a kid on Christmas, she gently pulled out the false bottom to find, to her surprise, ten DVDs smuggled from the US _and_ a copy of _The Anarchist's Cookbook._ She couldn't help but stifle a laugh at that, thinking of the only anarchist she knew. Satisfied with the new shipment, she picked up the more controversial material and moved it into the rather claustrophobic storage space behind the staircase that led up to her flat.

The front bell tinkled once again and she turned to see a sight that struck fear in the hearts of Londoners.

A Fingerman.

Gloved hands dropped the blinds at the front of the shop as she let her hand slide inconspicuously to the pistol she had under the counter just for these circumstances.

"I _am_ open right now, but don't let me stop you."

He smiled, flipping the window sign to 'closed, 'flashing a black and red double cross badge. "Not anymore you're not, Evey Hammond." _I know that voice_, she thought as relief washed over her.

"V!" she said as she dropped her hand from the pistol under the counter.

He bowed regally to her.

"Shit! I almost shot you, you bloody man!"

"And one day a Fingerman will shoot you too if you keep dispensing spray cans to children." He retorted, the latex mask he wore crinkling around his mouth and the corner of his eyes as he frowned.

"Now, where is it?"

She quirked an eyebrow at him. He sighed.

"Your false bottom crate. Where is it?"

"How-"

V cut her off, "You're hardly the only book keeper in the city that gets them, Evey."

Letting off a puff of frustration, she led him over to the storage area, pulling back the curtain. V dropped to his knees while nodding his approval, looking over her impressive collection of contraband. Evey looked down at the kneeling vigilante and noticed his disguise wasn't quite complete; the makeup covering his neck had begun to come off, revealing raised red and white scars crisscrossing the nape of his neck.

Without realizing it, she reached down to evenly distribute what was left of his makeup and found her hand crushed in his tight grip, his whole body wheeling around to face her, eyes locking on hers. _His eyes_, she thought, looking into their golden hazel the color of tiger's eye before he averted them from her gaze.

His free hand drifted to his neck absently before examining his makeup caked hand. "Do you have a room where I can touch this up?"

She nodded before leading him up the stairs, his hand still clutching hers. "Makeup's in top right drawer of the counter if you need it. Try not to make a mess." He thanked her before gently shutting the door, and she had to hold her laughter at the thought of V going through and using her own makeup supplies.

After much shuffling and drawer shifting, V emerged from the washroom with his skullcap pulled further down his neck, the top of the cap resting precariously close to the fringe where latex met skin. "That's better." He exclaimed lamely. "Now, back to rummaging?" Already slipping down the stairs and away from her.

She watched with amusement as he meticulously piled his finds around the floor, stopping every now and again to consider if he had that particular book or movie, the dissertations and journals left untouched. When Evey saw him pause for a prolonged period, she walked over to see what had so fully captivated his attention.

"I think I have the book for this back in the Gallery," he said no louder than a whisper. It was a DVD from last week's shipment, entitled _Children of Men_.

"What's it about?"

He handed her the case before pushing himself up from the ground. "Everyone in the world becomes infertile except for a single woman and a group of rebels take great pains from letting the government get to her or her unborn child." He gently plucked the DVD from her hands, stuffing it under the bulletproof vest he wore under his jacket. His other hand flew to his breast pocket, pulling what looked to be a credit card.

"Should you wish, the Gallery is always open to you," he said, taking her petite hand his large gloved one, placing what she now identified as an electronic key in her hand before folding her fingers delicately over it, "Take the Victoria tube station and follow it for about a kilometer. Turn left at the end, and slide this horizontally between three yellowed bricks to the right of a steel plated door at the first emergency exit tube." With that he left, turning the business sign to 'open' as he did so.

At precisely ten that evening, an hour before the real Fingermen began their prowling, Evey locked the shop and grabbed a small flashlight, running across the street to the Victoria tube station before anyone could spot her.

Jumping down onto the tracks, jogging onwards at a light pace, her flashlight beam bouncing along in time as she moved further into the decommissioned underground. Finally she came to the junction of which V stated, hanging a left along the gentle curve of the tracks, looking for the emergency exit tube.

Finding the door, she slid the key between the bricks, hearing the electronic chirp of whatever security system he installed and the sliding of the many locks that kept outsiders where they belonged.

The warmth and light of the Gallery enveloped her as she stepped over the doorsill; the sound of a cello seemed to vibrate through her chest as she stepped to the center of the Gallery. More art had accumulated in the halls, but with no space on the walls V had resorted to stacking them up behind one another with a small slice of foam to keep the frames from grinding against each other.

The music stopped behind her as a chair creaked and boots clicked against stone. He stood by the piano, much like their first encounter in the Gallery, though this time she was here by her own choice and his own invitation.

"Evey."

"I never knew you could play the cello."

"Ah." He breathed, and for just a moment she could almost see the thoughtful expression beneath Fawkes's smile. "That would be because I just acquired one last week.

"But please," he stepped aside with a hand held outward towards the tellie room, "I was just about to start the movie if you would care to watch it with me."

"Just like old times?"

He pulled her to him, draping her hand over his arm and leading her towards the tellie room. "Even more so."

A book copy of Children of Men sat on the coffee table that Evey grabbed, settling down next to V as he propped his feet up, his arm resting on the back of the sofa as was his ritual.

She read over the synopsis, "You didn't tell me this took place in England."

"I believe just about every movie taking place in a near or post-apocalyptic world takes place in England." He drawled in his uniquely scholarly way.

"Name one."

"_28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Day of the Triffids_…need I go on?"

She rolled her eyes and considered before finally agreeing. _The damn man always has to be right,_ she thought.

"Don't looked so miffed, Evey. In the future, _you_ will get to be the know-it-all." He said mysteriously, pressing a gloved finger to her lips to prevent a retort.

A world of crumbling infrastructure and social deterioration unfolded before them, set in a world twenty years ahead of its time. It was a world of dreadfully solemn people, where the last form of hope against human extinction came in the form of an eighteen-year-old Brazilian man who had been stabbed outside of a bar.

"People have never been able to think of a future without themselves at the center of it." V said beside her after a while.

"No, I suppose not." She said as a very familiar face came on screen, "I've seen that man before."

"Certainly not alive seeing as he is obviously a black man."

"No, no, not in real life. When I was staying with Gordon we watched a movie about a drag queen and _he_ was the drag queen." Yes, she was quite certain now that she kept watching. The same voice, the same scars across his forehead. V shrugged next to her, focused more on the motorcyclists shooting at the transport car.

Evey flinched slightly when Julian was shot in the neck and she could feel V tense slightly as his arm dropped slightly, holding her around the shoulders almost…_possessively_? Was that what she would call it?

By this time in the movie, Evey was beginning to lose interest though V was entirely engrossed in it. It was by her luck that when they finally met the pregnant woman they were all steadfastly trying to protect that Evey winced and V just happened to see, chuckling.

"What?"

"You flinched."

"The idea of pregnancy does not hold much charm for me. You spend nine months waddling around, vomiting and having a sore back, when in the end-"

"You could have a devil of a child." He finished for her.

She smiled seeing that he understood. "Yeah. Exactly." He chuckled softly, squeezing her shoulder as she leaned into his, happy he didn't flinch away from the contact.

"V."

"Hmm?"

"One day we should watch _The Salt Flats_ together."

He remained silent for a while and she wished she could at least see his eyes just to see what he was thinking, or at least staring at while doing so. "I regret to say I do not have a copy of it. It was already a small independent film with not many copies around, so it wouldn't surprise me if Sutler managed to truly destroy all of them." He hung his head sadly. Evey sighed softly, also saddened that she would probably never see the true face of the woman who had brought the both of them so much freedom.

All out war waged on screen now; the Fishes had launched their attack on the refugee camp Theo and Kee had slipped into, the fact that they were running around carrying a newborn child was not aiding in their escape as the British Army tanks crawled closer. It made her wonder what it would be like after the 5th. Would the military stage a coup? Would the people rise up and take back their country? Would _nothing_ change? Somehow, she thought V was thinking the exact same thing and she squeezed the gloved hand that rested on her shoulder tenderly in acknowledgement of his unsaid thoughts.

They watched Theo died quietly in the rowboat as screen faded to black. Movie over, the two of them stood in unison, the clock in the center hall signaling that it was now one in the morning. Ejecting the disc from the media player and placing it back in its case and handed it back to Evey.

"Am I a video rental service now?" She said as she placed it safely in her shoulder bag.

"No. More of a video borrowing service; renting implies I exchange it for money, which I did not."

"But borrowing implies that you asked for permission, which you did not. So V, I do believe you stole it from me."

"And I nonetheless returned it back to you, hence borrowing." She heard a genuine smile as wide as Guy Fawkes from under the mask. He walked with her towards the entrance, pulling his hat, cape and knife belt from the coat stand next to the door as if to follow her out.

"V you don't have to-" he waved her off.

"I completely insist," he said as he propped the door open for her, "You would be surprised by how much activity there is in the tunnels at night." He gripped her hand as he led her down the pitch-black tunnels he had memorized over the years. His pace was steady, almost leisurely, but he remained completely silent. Walking beside him, Evey couldn't help but feel like an elephant with heavy footsteps while V seemed to make none.

Escorting her to the very end, she opened the door to the shop, V remaining outside, his cape and large frame hiding Evey from any prying eyes that might come upon them.

"Until next time, sweet Eve." He bowed and touched the lips of the mask to her hand, the both of them quite certain there _would_ be a next time.


	5. Home Movies

**A/N – This chapter actually doesn't feature a movie and is incredibly short.**

**Read and REVIEW on to discover why!**

Creeping around Bloomsbury, Evey couldn't help feel a bit like V. She had started out from the bookshop just as curfew began, dressed in black, silently moving towards the end of the lane. _21, 22, 23_, she counted off in her head until she reached number 24 at the end of the lane, the black door had been barricaded off in the typical fashion of Creedy's most covert Fingermen.

The locks removed, she poked her head through the door, the rest of her following seeing the coast was clear. The room had been stripped thoroughly by both the Finger and looters; the walls were unadorned, candleholders and silver fixtures ripped unceremoniously from the walls, the furniture gone or in tattered ruins. She wondered if what she sought was still her, tucked away downstairs where the most private of the owner's possessions stayed.

Lifting the rug in the foyer, she pressed her foot against the false baseboard under the third light fixture, watching the trapdoor beneath dropped with a loud groan. Descending, she found the cellar completely cleaned out, but that was expected. Searching the wine racks, she looked for the one cubby with the slight knob in it, but without any bottles in their familiar L shape to guide her, the process was tedious, leaving her to test each slot one by one.

Finding the right one, she firmly turned the knob within it, revealing Gordon's own Shadow Gallery, it too having been cleaned out and ransacked. The walls were bare, the pedestal that held the Quran lay broken on the floor, and God Save the Queen was nothing more than a pile of ashes on the floor. She sighed, not sure if she wanted to see what might await her in the deepest part of the cellar.

Reaching up to the small brass chandelier, she yanked it down from its chain, and just like in the mystery novels that Gordon had stocked on his bookshelves, the wall pushed inward, just enough for her to slide it out of the way, leaving her in a space no bigger than a powder room and lined with shelves. Home movies, scrapbooks, music recordings, deeds, contracts; everything she hoped to find was left completely untouched and in the same place they had been the morning Gordon went into work for the last time.

She particularly found interest in the home movies, their titles documenting anything from sailing trips in Brighton, New Years Eve parties, and…_bathtub boat racing_? She laughed at the last one in particular, wondering whose idea that had been. But she sobered quickly; she came her with a hunch and nothing more, having what she sought, she decided it would be best to leave quickly. In doing so though, she grabbed as many of the DVD's as possible and stuffed them into the scrapbook, ready to unravel the mystery that had been plaguing her mind since Gordon had walked up the hidden stairs carrying the thick leather book.

Shaky amateur footage of a boat race jiggled across Evey's flat screen as she sat down on the hard leather sofa that came with the flat.

'…_Round the last buoy now, its neck and neck between The Dirty Celt, Monkey Business, and Idle Thinking, 'not more than another kilo-'_

"_That's him!" _Said a tall and muscular black man just to the side of the camera's peripheral lense. Evey recognized him at once as Gordon's old partner and she assumed by the way the camera was raised above most of the crowds' heads that it was Gordon himself holding the camera.

"_No, he's wearing orange just like the tub." There was a momentary pause from Gordon's disembodied voice, "There he is!" And the camera wheeled around to see a bathtub boat bouncing mercilessly across the English Channel. "Let's go CHRIS!" The camera shook more with his yell._

The announcers voice boomed over the speakers as the boats neared the black buoys at the end of the run_. 'This'll be a tough one folks…what's this? Monkey Business seems to be having some engine issues! Oh, too bad folks! I kilometer to go, Idle Thinking and Dirty Celt left to the lead, it's time to go hard or go home!"_

"_Come on Chris…" _The crowd held their breaths while their necks craned to see the end of what Evey saw as a photo finish race, and she found herself holding her breath for Gordon's brother in the _Dirty Celt._

A roar erupted from the crowd and the two men, _'Dirty Celt! The Dirty Celt of London has taken the 2017 EuroTUB Cup!'_ came the cry of the frenzied announcer as the image on screen changed to a tall, thin man wearing a full faced helmet and a blazing orange wet suit carrying a bronze trophy that looked to weigh quite a bit.

"_So how does it feel to finally accomplish something, eh Chris?" Gordon said as he began to zoom the camera in and out of his brother's covered face._

"_Mm urs urts, thunk you." Chris said as he tried to pry the helmet from his face one-handed, grunting as Gordon and his partner chortled like hyenas._

"_What was that?"_

"_I said," he placed the helmet and trophy on the ground as he unzipped the wetsuit down to his waist, "My arse is numb, thank you very much."_

Evey paused the disc, studying hard. He looked to be in his early twenties or so, tall and lean with a well-sculpted body and a slight dusting of light brown hair on his chest. He wore a neatly trimmed beard that made him look more along the lines of a wet terrier than a man, but as her eyes roamed upwards, her breath caught.

His eyes were hazel with blackened flecks floating aimlessly in their depths. A hand flew to her gaping mouth, realization dawning and leaving her near breathless.

"Oh God." Picking up the scrapbook, she shuffled through the pages with an urgency she had never known she possessed.

Pulling one out at random, she popped it into another DVD tray and was greeted by the sight of about ten men in Gordon's living room, with who Evey was now convince was V draping his legs casually over the back of the chair holding a can of what looked to be the disgusting green Monster Energy drink.

_Gordon called out to them all, 'Right, everyone know the rules?'_

_'Aye-Aye captain funny man!' Was V's reply from the recliner that he refused to sit in correctly._

_'Oh God you're shitfaced already.' Gordon held his own can of Vemon in the air, 'First to go through an energy drink, a beer, a shot, and some of Chris's mud coffee wins. GO!'_

There was another thing, then! She remembered that back in the early days she had spent with him there was always either tea or coffee in the morning, but the coffee simply wasn't coffee. For some reason or another the coffee always had an almost sludge-like consistency to it, this wasn't to say it wasn't great coffee, but she could never figure out how V could possibly ruin the texture of a decent pot of coffee.

Back in the video, Gordon was down for the count after the shot as well as about four other people, and V hadn't even gotten halfway through his can of Monster. It was almost as he was purposely trying to lose while Gordon's partner was powering through the cup of sludge.

Someone walked in right in that moment, '_Chris?_' It was a woman, and that in itself made Evey's blood boil. '_Who won?'_

'_Everyone but Gordon.' _Somewhere in the background Evey could hear what she was pretty sure sounded like a faint_ 'fuck you' _followed by retching and a more audible '_worst idea ever_.'

* * *

><p><strong>So for reasons unknown, I've always thought of V looking along the lines of Rufus Sewell. Here's a link for the closet representation of a young V I could find: http: / pics. live journal. com/ belik /pic/ 0009x6ha**

**Take out the spaces and smoosh it all together.**


	6. Little Miss Sunshine

Movie Nights

Little Miss Sunshine

**A/N – This is the second to last chapter that takes place during the timespan of the movie. I'm debating whether or not to continue past that. I have ideas, but if no one reads them, then there's no point, is there?**

_Shit_, Evey thought, tossing couch cushions across the room, _where is that damned key? _She swore she left it in the coffee table drawer next to the remote, but the damn thing wasn't there! Huffing a sigh of frustration, she decided to check the bookshop downstairs just in case it wound up migrating without her remembering.

There it was!

Laying dead center of the counter, the little maroon key sat atop a piece of paper she had never seen before, stained with what looked to be coffee.

_Evey,_

_I would be sincerely humbled if you could join me this evening. Perhaps you could bring something along this time? I regret to say I did not have the chance to tell you in person today, as you were out._

_V_

She pursed her lips as she thought of what to bring, or rather, what not to bring. Should she bring the DVDs she had taken from Gordon's house? Maybe she could bring some of the cello recordings instead; Gordon _did_ say Chris created his own compositions. Maybe V recreated them and would recognize them?

It was then that an idea struck her. It would be risky, but if she played it right, it just _might_ work out.

Sprawled across the couch, V was spending a quiet evening staring absently at the pages of his latest acquisition, _The Hunger Games_. He faintly recalled that Evey had once told him about watching the movie, yet he couldn't find anything special enough about the book to make a movie about. To him it just seemed to have the same terribly cliché, oft-repeated plot that had a nasty habit of turning up in books written in the early millennium.

Lights flickered around the gallery, signaling that someone was approaching the Gallery, and he smiled. _Evey_. Slipping his mask on, he stood and straightened his sweatshirt where it had become bunched up and walked into the center of the Gallery to wait for her.

Bolts and locks clicked as Evey walked into the Gallery, carrying with her a shoulder bag that had mysteriously appeared in the bookshop the evening after he had appeared to her in dressed in the black of the most elite Fingermen.

"Good evening." He greeted.

"For the most part." She looked at him, noticing something was off. _His gloves_, she realized, trying to look as though she hadn't noticed their absence, lest it invite him to go search for them.

"Ah." He seemed to rock back and forth fraction on his heels. "Is there anything I can do to make it a _very_ good evening then?"

Evey blushed slightly at his comment, wondering if he realized what he had just said. Without looking at him she pulled the DVD from her bag, "Watch this with me and see who dies laughing first?"

V reached out and grabbed the case gently to study it. "Well I suppose if it has a VW bus on the cover it must be _alright_," he handed it back to here, "But I believe it will be you, my dear, who will lose."

"Want to make that a challenge?"

"How could I not?" He said as he placed a hand on the small of her back, guiding her towards the tellie room. "Do you know what day this is, Evey?"

She thought, "Depends, what's going to explode?"

"I beg you're pardon?"

"Every time you've ever asked me that, something explodes." V chuckled merrily, and Evey began to wonder if he was beginning to lose it.

"No, nothing will explode tonight." Evey gave a theatrical sigh of relief as she dropped to the couch, "No, today is October twenty-ninth."

"You're birthday?"

He ignored _that_ comment, "Let's just go back to that explosion you mentioned and say that England is on a verge of rebirth."

"And just think that I forgot to buy a baby shower gift." She mumbled under her breath, though she knew perfectly well V could hear it, his laughter ringing in her ears.

"Are you trying to have me lose this wager before it has even begun, Evey?"

Smirking, "Possibly."

Chuckling to himself, V sat down on the leather sofa, propping his feet on the coffee table as Evey unfolded the throw that had become a permanent resident on the back of the chair. He watched her, intrigued by her way of either wrapping the throw around her like a cloak or creating a small nest with it, no matter the temperature of the Gallery.

He watched her give a double take at his feet propped on the coffee table. "Those are some very _patriotic_ socks, V." she said as she flicked the tellie and media player on, trying to keep a smile from her face as the theatrical trailers began to play on screen.

He looked down at his feet clothed in the Union Jack, getting a good laugh at them himself. He remembered finding them quite a few years back somewhere in one of the fashion districts before Sutler had declared the flag as outdated and had it promptly removed from the public. Truth be told, it was probably the first time he had worn them, but why the bloody hell not?

"I guess I know what to get you for Christmas this year." She continued, "Frilly aprons, novelty socks, themed boxers." The mask beside her whipped around to face her, and she could just imagine the look of shock and the possible blush behind the already blushing mask of Fawkes.

V, however, could not see the humor of her statement. He had yet to make clear his plans for the 5th and would quite possibly leave off telling her until that final day,; if only to savor this last week without the news of his impending doom to taint their nights together.

"_Again with the fucking chicken! Is it possible to get something to eat around here that ain't the goddamn fucking chicken?"_

With a mixed look of shock and amusement, Evey turned to V, "I remember my mum's dad was exactly like him when I was little. There was always something wrong with what my parents where doing, but my brother and I could never do wrong." She smiled sadly, looking up at V who had been sitting stiffly beside her for the last half hour, "Do you remember what your grandparents were like?"

The question seemed to hang in the air for a small eternity, V's tension palpable as he tried to find what to say. "I don't recall having grandparents." He said flatly. _Or anyone else for that matter_, he thought cynically to himself. There were a few odd flashes of memory from his life before Larkhill, every now and again, but nothing coherent ever came along. Such was the result of having your very sanity tortured out of you.

He wondered what his own family was like. He knew that he had at least one sibling, probably older than himself, or so he thought based on oft-repeating nightmares and tortured dreams. V was convinced he was also the Dwayne of the family, the black sheep; or maybe the whole lot of them were a bit off from the normal Brit family.

So absorbed in his thinking, he hardly noticed the gentle nudge to his knee. "What are you thinking in there, V?"

"I beg your pardon?" Jolted by the sound of her voice, the question taking a moment to seep its way through is thought process. "Oh just wondering at how they all haven't slit their wrists because of each other. Or throats."

"Welcome to family life, V," she said, her head resting precariously near his shoulder, "Its about sixty percent shouting, thirty percent compromising, and ten percent door slamming."

She looked up at him intensely, "What was it like for you?"

Once again she could feel him freeze up, the cogs of his mind working overtime to come up with something to say. Did he not remember his past, before going to the camp? She had only a small tastes of the hell he would have been subjected to, but had they really gone as far as to torture all that was good from his mind? Had he truly forgotten bathtub racing and paintballing college roommates?

Terror pulsed through V's mind as he thought of what he could possibly say that didn't come off as an utter lie. Could he tell her that whatever was left of his humanity had been destroyed in the camps just as his body had? That one day his mind had simply shut down and shut out any recollection of life prior to Larkhill?

"Evey," V held his hands limply on his lap, looking down at them shamefully, "You've seen physically what the camp did to me. They stripped me of everything; my family, my name, my memories. I am nothing more than idea held together by muscle and bone now."

There, he had said it. He was nothing. Nothing more than the shell of the man that used to be. And there wasn't a damn thing neither he nor anyone else could do about it. He didn't even truly exist anymore; all records of him had burned at Larkhill and had been destroyed by Norsefire when he had been sent away. He was John Doe, deceased November the fifth of 2018, birth date unknown.

"What if I said all wasn't lost?"

"I would say you believe too steadfastly in clean, happy endings."

"V." Evey touched his shoulder lightly, "I mean it. When I was at Gordon's I saw a few pictures-"

"Of a man? I could easily peruse an photo album and find pictures of a man." He snapped. This was getting out of hand. He knew Evey meant well, but truly! He was not born with the face of Guy Fawkes and beyond his hands she had never seen any physical-

"Of your eyes." His head whipped to face her and Evey was convinced that beneath the mask there was a look of pure rage, "When you walked into the shop as a Fingerman, your eyes weren't covered. They're very unique, you know. I've never seen amber with black mixed in before."

He sat there, seeming speechless before hoarsely whispering, "It's metal."

"What's metal?" She asked, confused.

"The black. It's pieces of metal. I've had them for as long as I can remember but from what I do not know."

He let out a great sigh, content to wallow in his newfound misery. He was sure Evey was mistaken about who he was and how ever well intentioned her attempts at giving him closure were, they left him feeling worse off than before. Did she not see that it was of the greatest importance to his mission to remain as calm and in control as possible, beyond what any man on the street was capable of. Yet his curiosity was almost overwhelming. Could he really be who Evey thought he was? Did he really have connections to Gordon Dietrich before Larkhill?

Evey stood beside him, the movie entirely forgotten by the both of them as V considered what to do. He could try to reason with himself as much as he wanted that to see the evidence of his existence would break all efforts towards the fifth, yet the man in him begged for closure of the greatest mystery he had ever encountered.

A petite hand rested on his shoulder, providing an immeasurable amount of support towards his conflicted thoughts. His mind made up, he stood and walked off towards the wing of the gallery where his suites were, leaving his gloves untouched on the table.

Walking briskly through the London Underground, the whistling wind and constant clapping of Evey's flats were driving V up the wall as they moved towards the mouth of the Victoria Station. Disguised once again as a rather haggard Fingerman, he felt confident no one would think to bother the two of them as they made the mad dash across the street to Evey's shop and flat in the pouring rain. The shop bell tinkled as they entered, the windows blacked out by the blinds to prevent the smash and grabs that were becoming a common occurrence as the fifth loomed closer and Londoner's become more bolder.

They climbed the stairs, Evey leading V by the hand somewhat similar to a lost puppy as he walked about in a stupor, wondering if this had been a good idea at all. He was entirely prepared to be disappointed, but was terrified of the small chance that he did in fact have a past.

Evey opened a drawer built into her coffee table as he sunk down into the leather sofa and handed him a heavy, red leather bound scrapbook. "Gordon showed this to me one night. Leads all the way up to when you and his partner were taken away."

He palmed the book experimentally, flipping towards the back of the book where she had said the most recent pictures were. A tall and remarkably thin Gordon Dietrich smiling with the same boyish grin he wore on every program stared back at him along with a rather stout black man with well defined muscles worthy of any boxer, the both of them wearing tuxedos as if at a wedding.

But then there was another man who looked to be about six or seven years younger than Gordon, with brown hair and amber eyes wearing Oxford robes. He _had_ had brown hair all those years ago at Larkhill. He remembered how often they would shear it all off too, the scissors and razors cutting more flesh than hair. Beneath the picture was the caption: _Chris D. – Oxford 2017. Civic Engineering, ._

"No," he flipped frantically towards the front, watching the two men decrease in age and more people appear in the pictures. "No, no, NO!"

A yellowed paper fell from the pages as he continued; a birth certificate. Shaking fingers lifted it to his eyes and he read aloud, "Christopher Matthew Dietrich. Born the year of nineteen ninety-three on August seventeenth in Brighton, England."

It couldn't be him, his mind screamed as he let the scrapbook fall to the floor from his numb hands. Brown hair, amber eyes with mysterious flecks of metal, now attributed to metalworking. He could play the cello and build cellars for hoarding controversial books. He now left with no doubts: he was Christopher Dietrich.

Evey watched as unmasked eyes flicked through each face on each page, obvious anxiety and terror dancing across them. The sound of the scrapbook collapsing on to the floor had shaken her, but V was shaken even more as she watched him come to the same conclusion she had two weeks previously.

Suddenly she felt something very heavy in her lap. It had played out that the shock of the situation had been too much for the vigilante and had left muttering away his newfound mantra of 'no' with his head laying limply in her lap. Evey could do little more than hold him against her, hoping she hadn't broken the remnants of his sanity once and for all.

"I haven't been Christopher Dietrich in twenty years, Evey. Why should I be him now?" Came a choked sound from beneath her that might have turned into a sob had he elaborated further.

She had no answer for him; but she knew he was right. Chris Dietrich died in a fire at a Norsefire concentration camp. Only V remained and it was only V who she had ever known.

**A/N #2 – OK, in my authors note I said I had written the epilogue, but after writing this my mind has changed and I will be writing a new epilogue and another chapter that will be more fitting to how I think this strange little story should end. TWO MORE CHAPTERS TO GO!**


	7. Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

**A/N – Wow, its been a whole month since I started this! Sorry for no updates since the 1****st****, finals always destroy whatever good streak I'm on when I'm writing. I have two weeks off now so this story WILL be finished before 2012. **

**Please review, even if you are just pointing out a run-on sentence. It makes me feel loved to know there are people ready to go grammar Nazi on my posts. :)**

Thump. Thump. Thump thump thump. V counted each step off in his head as he listened to Evey's ascent up the back stairs into her flat. It was exactly fifteen steps from the storefront to her private front door, but she would skip steps seven and thirteen where the boards had become weak and unreliable before unlocking the double deadbolt at the top.

He turned slightly from the movie he had been watching, preferring to watch Evey over even the Count of Monte Cristo as the final thirty hours of his life began to draw to a close. He had hardly left her flat for the last week; , his plans had finished slightly ahead of schedule and leaving left him to wait through the calm before the storm., though it was more catatonic than calm for him.

He thought of many hours had he just lain there on Evey's sofa, thinking of the life he once had but no longer remembered. She had essentially presented him with his own autobiography, yet couldn't remember writing a single page of it; each word was as foreign as it was familiar.

"You know," a small, dense box dropped beside his feet on the coffee table making him jump as Evey spoke to him, "Human facial expressions are much easier to read than Fawkesian facial expressions."

He sighed, they had come to rather tense agreement that if he wanted to remain in her flat that he would have to forgo his usual mask for something less suspicious. After what he had humorlessly deemed his 'identity crisis,' he had briefly ventured away from Evey's flat and back to the Gallery to construct a new flesh mask. This one however, was modeled after what he assumed his twenty-year-old self would look like with the addition of another twenty years. Though pleased with the results of his reconstructive labors, it quickly saddened him to know that it was all in vain; he would never again resemble his original appearance, hope as he might.

Now This time his new face hid gave away nothing as he leaned over the table to look at the metallic and not the least bit legal looking contraption neatly packed away in a mass of purple Styrofoam peanuts.

"Where, pray-tell, did you find that?"

Evey gave him a fiendish smile as she dumped the contents of the box onto the floor, "Canary Wharf." Peanuts floated every which way as she picked out coils of cords and plug-ins, ignoring the death glare V was giving the top of her head. She knew damn well it wasn't the nicest end of town and she sure as hell didn't need the lecture he was sure to give about it. "Grab that side of tellie, would you?"

He stood then, the top of Evey's head barely coming up to his shoulders, scooting the flatscreen away from the wall as she tried to figure out which plug went where. He was still mystified by what exactly it was supposed to be, but he decided he would find out rather quickly. The TV went to snow, the sound his invading his mind and he was convinced it was used by the finger as just another rather creative torture method. However, with the 'accidental' pull of a plug, he put an end to both of their sufferings.

Evey pulled out a long, collapsible wire that had broken in two, "Shit, how much do you wager that this is the antenna?" V said nothing, "Now I know why I got such a 'good' deal on this."

"Yes, what is this box, exactly?"

Evey did a double take, staring at him incredulously as if he had grow two heads spontaneously. "You really haven't seen one of these before? You own probably the largest private collection of contraband in all of England but you've never seen one of these?" He shook his head and hung it in mock shame.

Evey sighed. "It's a satellite tuner. You can pick up tellie channels from all around the world with one of these." If the damned thing worked, she thought bitterly, throwing the antenna into the box it had come from and leaning against the entertainment center.

V reached into the box and pulled out the slim wire, checking where it had snapped in two. It looked easily repaired.

"You have a butane torch, do you not?"

"Yeah, why?"

He stood and walked into the small, spartan galley kitchen just off of the entrance hall, Evey following on his heels to see what exactly he was up to. Cupboards opened and closed, some harder than they needed to, until he found the small butane torch and a discarded tin can.

The blue flame burnt low over the mouth of the torch when he sparked it experimentally. Setting the torch down, V cut the very edge of the lip on the tin can off with a box cutter before bending it tightly around where the antenna had snapped.

He handed the antenna to Evey, "Hold this together as tight and as straight as you can." Sparking the torch once more, he carefully but crudely soldered the antenna back together, half watching his work and half watching how the sparks danced in Evey's eyes as she averted towards her knife rack. Oh how he would miss looking into those fearless chocolate eyes! How many more times would he have the chance to look into their depths in the final twenty-nine hours of his life?

"Rotate it just a hair forward, Eve."

Not quite understanding, she tilted it upwards, the crude soldering wire bubbling. With one hand still using the torch, his free hand enveloped her own, twisting her wrist slightly so he could have better access to the underside of the antenna, trying in earnest not to smile at the sensation of holding her small, delicate, _perfect_ hand, the triumph of not seeing any sign of revulsion on her face.

He wondered if he was somehow cheating her, if that by wearing the flesh mask that he might somehow be deluding her about his true appearance. Hands were hands, but his _face_-

The small cooking torch sputtered and died as the last of the tin hardened around the midsection of the antenna. V held it up to his eyes, pleased at the results of his impromptu handiwork.

"That should be good enough." He handed it back to Evey, "I hope nothing else in that box has shared-" Evey had already darted from the room, leaving him alone in the starch white kitchen.

His movie probably over, he resigned himself to walking back into living room only to find Evey beating and swearing at the poor tellie.

"I would suggest before taking your rage out on the tellie that you plug it in first."

She found the cord that V had unplugged. "Touché."

The tellie cracked back to life and with a little bit of adjusting to the makeshift antenna, they were getting a clear as day picture of the free world playing a very spirited match of football somewhere in Latin America.

Evey pressed roughly on the remote as the football announcer continued on in Spanish, "Shit, how do you turn subtitles on?" Reaching over, V lightly found the need green button at the bottom of the remote near the sound controls. He wondered what sort of convenience a universal remote possibly brought; to him it was much easier to use six different remotes with clearly marked functions than it was Evey's single remote with overlapping purposes.

'_Palas crosses the center, passes to Ramos but back to Palas, running and OH! Bad dive, he's getting a yellow now, watch him argue with the ref! Come on, give him a red!'_

Evey shook her head as the player squabble continued. "Change it."

"As my lady commands," he said as he passed to the next channel, a French news station. Truthfully he wouldn't have minded watching a match of football. It was something he hadn't done since his days as Christopher, though he still knew he would enjoy it just the same.

"Next." Al Jazeera TV. "Again."

Another sporting event appeared, but this time she paused, recognizing the broadcaster's emblem. "It can't be. I haven't seen one of these since-"

"2022 in Santiago," V finished. It had been the last World Cup that had been broadcasted in the England; Sutler having come to complete power the next year and withdrawing the country from competition. Come to think of it, that was the last year any of these programs were seen in England.

"God it's been so long. I had to have been nine or so the last time around."

He looked over, reminded once more of the twenty-year age gap that spanned between them as Evey watched on, completely oblivious to his troubled expression. "Indeed."

For sometime they just sat like that, in awe of the new world suddenly opened up, channel surfing at their own leisure. They stopped every now and again when she would come across an English-speaking channel and one channel in particular stuck out, the unforgettable accent of the yank news reporter grating against her ears.

"And here we have the supposed 'Disunited' States of America." Evey said bitterly, "Shit they're even talking about us!"

"'_Civil unrest continues in the totalitarian State of England as the military prepares for a possible rebellion in the coming days. Several riots have broken out in Leeds leaving eighty-six civilians and eleven police officers dead_.'"

V smirked to himself as he continued reading the bottom news ticker, the latex mask uncomfortably pulling at the corner of his lips. He wondered if it was a blessing or a curse that the world now looked on at what was being turned into an ultimate smack down between a dictator and his people. _Of course something like this would happen_, he thought, considering they all lived in the most closed-off society since the fall of North Korea.

But if the rest of the world knew of England's current state, did they know anything else? Did the rest of the world look on as Sutler came to power, watching the man whom many in the UK considered a savior, and do _nothing_ to stop it? What else did the outside world know? Did they know of St. Mary's, the camps, the experiments? Did they all watch Dietrich's last variety show knowing they would never see the poor fool ever again? The thought of the world's tendency of being bystanders made his blood boil and his grip on the remote tighten as he switched to the next channel, a movie featuring Daniel Craig.

Something beside Evey snapped, her head wheeling around to see that V had managed to completely crush the remote in on itself.

"Evey, I-"

"Was thinking of how the world watched and did nothing when we needed it most?" He nodded.

_Her powers of observation still serving her well, but perhaps too well_, he thought. Did she notice the ounce of man left in him retreat inward in preparation for following evening or the conflict raging within him as he selfishly thought of ways for tomorrow to end with Evey in his arms and Norsefire at his feet?

"Evey." _Stop!_

She looked towards him, seeing sadness flicker briefly in his specked eyes. "Yes?"

"Tomorrow evening, could you please," _Not!_ "Come down to the Gallery? I have a gift for you, should you accept." _You fool!_

"Yeah." She looked up at into those sad, amber eyes, "But on _one_ condition." He sat up straighter, his false eyebrows quirking ridiculously in an exaggerated inquiry that nearly made Evey snort.

"Watch this movie with me?" She asked innocently enough, already leaning into the space just under his collarbone where she had always fitted so well. How could someone, man _or_ idea, say no to that?

"Of course, but I fear a small change is in order."

Before she could question him or he could lose his nerve, V gently grabbed Evey around the waist, pulling her to him as he lay back against the arm of the sofa, her head coming to rest above his fast-paced heart. The position would certainly leave him with a stiff neck, but it would be a small price to pay to have his Eve so close as his time drew to it's inevitable end. Tomorrow he would bring Norsefire crashing beneath his feet, but for tonight he would be content to hold his dear Eve in his arms and watch their final film together, _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_.

Taking his hand in her own and interlacing them together, Evey reveled in the one true connection between her and the masked vigilante. This was the real him, the true, enigmatic flesh and blood side of him that until recently she had only seen by sheer accident and luck. She wondered what had coerced him to lower his defenses, but was thankful all the same that no longer did he shy away or stiffen at from her touch.

Lying there peacefully on V's chest, Evey didn't care much for the opening of the movie. Once in a while she would hazard a glance up at V, only to meet his piercing, gold and metal-flecked gaze questioningly every time. Lisbeth, however, held her full attention as she became more prominent within the main plot and her own.

"Lisbeth reminds me a bit of you, you know that V?" Evey said while lightly tracing a finger along the ridges that interwove across V's hands. She doubted he would ever be fully comfortable with her attentions, but let it slide when he realized there was no revulsion to be had. Truthfully she found the texture fascinating; it was as if she could literally trace a map along the back of his hands.

V's chest rose slightly as he hummed in query, the reverberating sound deeply penetrating her.

"Yeah," she continued, "Always dressed in black, cracking computers like it's nothing, moving around without anyone noticing."

"Hmmm. We do find black to be a rather flattering color." He smirked.

"It's horrible though."

"Why?"

"The way she was treated. It's like the JRP." Memories she wasn't fond of in the least began to surface. Five years of her life spent in dorms with hundreds of other children like her whose parents had been taken away to the camps with daily attempted indoctrinations of Norsefire and the punishment. Rape and beatings were commonplace among the girls dorm and she herself had spent much time in solitary confinement for the smallest of infractions.

A lone tear charted its course along her cheek, the single drop penetrating V's shirt and drawing his attention away from the movie. A rough thumb swiped the trail the tear had made down her cheek, Evey looking up at him with an almost pleading expression.

"The cruelty of this regime has scarred us all." He watched as her eyes flash sympathetically towards his hands for the slightest of moments. "*But I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.*"

"I cry for us all, V. But mostly you."

"Why?"

"Because you lost everything. Your family, your memories, everything you had before the Reclamation."

He looked down upon her, at a loss of what to say next as his fingers lightly ruffled her closely shorn hair. "But look at what I have gained." He said finally, earning a dubious expression that questioned what good could possibly have come from his terrible sufferings.

A finger slipped beneath her chin, forcing her to meet his soft gaze. "You, Evey."

"There was a book I read, quite a while ago actually, about an Afghan man named Amir looking for redemption after committing a grave sin against his half-brother. When he moved to America, he became smitten with a young woman who ran a flea market. It was then that the cloud that had hung over him since betraying his brother had finally lifted, when he met her." He sighed, realizing he was perhaps rambling. "The last nineteen years of my life have been a never ending darkness, yet a year ago, you brought the sun at last."

Evey watched as tears of his own seemed to form in sorrow-filled eyes. "Forgive me, Evey." He breathed, shifting beneath her, on his feet and out the door before realized what was happening.

She rushed to the front door, calling his name though she knew it was in vain. V had simply upped and left, leaving her still stunned at his words. They certainly left her with no other choice; tomorrow she would go the Gallery.

**A/N – Now it's time to get my butt into overdrive and get the epilogue rolling before 2012! Please drop some reviews or else no Festivus presents for you!**

***Quote by Gandalf, Lord of the Rings.**


	8. Epilogue

**A/N – Here is the epilogue! Thanks for the reviews and the reads. I'm thinking of publishing the alternate epilogue (which in my opinion is total character assassination) so review and tell me if you want a separate posting. **

**I think all of you will be familiar with this particular film.**

* * *

><p>The door shut heavily as Evey escorted the wide-eyed Finch from the Gallery, the echo reminding her of how empty it must have been for the nineteen years before she had arrived.<p>

Of how empty it would now forever be.

Her clothes were still damp with blood, _his_ blood, now turning to rust on the denim jacket she had been wearing. At a loss over what to do, she slumped against the door, looking down the entrance hall and into the center of the Gallery where V's piano and cello stood. Never again would she hear them be played here where the subway stone provided wonderful acoustics.

She wanted to cry. Honestly she did, but she was too numb for even that simple act. She had no direction anymore. The north to her compass was now gone and would never come back, so the needle took to spinning aimlessly.

Something had to be done. Maybe she would clean. Finch had certainly tracked in enough blood, and it certainly wasn't V's. Looking at it, it was almost as if she could see the foulness of the men who had killed her beloved in their very blood.

Reluctantly, Evey pushed herself up from the towel on the ground that served as V's doormat. Yes, she would definitely clean. Now all she needed was to figure out where V had kept the non-explosive household products. She thought she remembered seeing a small closet near the living area behind V's loyal fencing partner, and it was in that direction she walked towards, thankful for at least a small goal to accomplish.

However, she was dismayed to see that no such closet existed, just another bookroom. But something seemed off about Mondego. He stood tall and proud in his armor as always, but his breastplate seemed to be missing, exposing the metal skeleton that kept him upright. On top of that, something seemed to be sticking out from his ornate yet battered helmet.

Cautiously, Evey stood on the very tips of her toes to reach the foreign white object, Mondego being much taller than both her and V, only to find it was an envelope addressed to her, her name written in a thin, delicate script that seemed to match V perfectly. The jukebox began to play off of what was surely a hidden trip, and the song couldn't be more fitting.

_My dearest Eve,_

Imagine there's no heaven,

It's easy if you try,

_I am dead. It must be said._

No hell below us,

Above us only sky.

_I hope one day you will find it in your heart to forgive me for leaving you. I fear that last night may have done more harm than good as I never meant to give you a sense of false hope for a future that could never be. _

Imagine all the people,

Living for today,

_I cannot and will not tell you, my dear Eve, that everything will be all right. As I told you the evening before, do not be afraid to weep. Do not be afraid to show your anger, your grief; they are only signs of the depth of your love. _

Imagine there's no countries,

It isn't hard to do,

_Know that I tried, however weakly, to come back whole to you; look closely at Mondego and know that this is true. But what if I had survived, Evey? Then what would we do? I have often dreamt in these past few weeks about how life could have been for us in a different England, where both of our lives and families remained intact. Maybe we would have met through Gordon as simply Evey Hammond and Christopher Dietrich, instead of as terrorist and 'accomplice.' _

Nothing to kill or die for,

And no religion too,

_But there are no coincidences in life, Evey; I fell in love with you the moment I saw you in that alley along Fleet Street, yet I could not admit it until last night as I held you tightly in my arms. _

Imagine all the people,

Living life in peace,

_Now that I am gone, I ask you to tell this story. Tell the world about how England fell; make the world remember so that the former fate of this country does not repeat itself. Tell the world about us, if you so wish. Do not let my death or the deaths of your parents and my brother be in vain._

You may say I'm a dreamer,

But I'm not the only one,

_Mourn for me if you must, but do not mourn for too long. Do not doom yourself to the same never-ending solstice that held fast in my life for nineteen years. Find the sun, Evey._

I hope someday you'll join us,

And the world will be as one.

_My sincerest love,_

_V_

* * *

><p><span>Five Years Later:<span>

'_Oh God I maced that detective. Why'd I do that?'_

'_You did what you thought was right.'_

'_No, I shouldn't have done that. I must have been out of my mind.'_

'_Is that what you think or is that what they want you to think?'_

'_I think I should go.'_

"Cut!"

Somewhere a bell rang out, the faux-Gallery set instantly vacated by the V and Evey doppelgängers while Evey's real counterpart watched from the shadows beside the now retired Inspector Finch.

"So? How is it so far?"

Evey didn't even flinch. "I think we should put some lifts in Paul's boots. He's much too short to be V. Has the voice nailed down pretty well though." She turned to face the haggard inspector. "How have you been since-"

"Fine." Though his lack of care for appearance seemed to say otherwise. Dominic, newly promoted to Finch's former rank had been killed in a car crash two weeks previously after an ambulance caught him in an intersection. This was the first time she had seen Finch since the funeral.

Finch's hand absently stroked the thick, greying stubble along his jawline. _Damn he needed a good shave_! "Dascombe wants to interview you and I on the film"

"And?"

"I turned him down."

Evey pursed her lips a bit before nodding in agreement. She had met Roger just once while working at the BTN before the whole terrorist fiasco, but in that brief period of time she had come to the same conclusion as Finch: Dascombe was a complete and utter git.

How crestfallen he had looked when Finch had told him to get off the terrorist-turned-freedom-fighter bandwagon! The man did have balls though, Finch had to admit, by inviting back the same woman whom he had been convinced was involved in the attempt to blow up his precious studio. Well, 'attempt' certainly wouldn't have covered it had he and Dominic not been on the chase for Evey.

Dominic. Poor kid. He'd been hit by the same ambulance he'd called in for a double fatal crash that he'd been called to near Hyde Park. The streets were wet with the recent March rains and he never had a chance against the four tonne vehicle.

A concerned hand pressed lightly on his arms as he dug his fists into the pockets of the overcoat. "Eric."

"Yes? Oh, Evey."

"I was just going to ask you if you wanted to drop in at the Gallery this evening."

Now wasn't that a shock? He'd only been there once; long ago on that fateful night that the defunct Parliament Hill had been blown into the Thames. He had stupidly forgotten his way back after that night and walked around in much of a daze in the following weeks as England began to wake up against its oppression. How many days had he spent in those tunnels looking at the bloody carnage that to this day still could not be washed from the pavement?

"That'd be…nice." He said finally, once again rubbing the stubble he would have to shave off before this evening. Shit, he really had fallen to ruins in these last few weeks, hadn't he?

Evey seemed to see right through the look of confusion that crossed his face. "Don't worry, just meet me at the bookshop across from the Victoria station round seven."

* * *

><p>"There are no coincidences in this whole V mess, is there Evey?" Finch asked as he met her at the appropriate place. He'd walked by this place several times before and after the 5th but he had never know that the woman he sought after everyday of an entire year was it's chief proprietor and tenant.<p>

She led him across the street towards the tunnels, "Not in the least, Mr. Finch." The Victoria Tube Station had been decommissioned further by the new government, the current PM not wanting the general public to have access to the foul place after the bloodshed it had incurred. The entrance had been barred and thoroughly enforced, but through circumstances he was sure she would never share with him, Evey had somehow come by the security codes into the Underground.

Even five years later, the reek of gun smoke hung in the air down here. Bloodstains still clung to the floors and walls, more hints at the historical blood shed that had taken place there. He doubted Evey came down this way very often, but this was the only entrance he knew of and therefore the only entrance Evey would ever trust him with.

They walked in amicable silence down the tracks, stepping through puddles and God knows what else that had accumulated over the years that the station had not been barricaded. Every so often he could hear the faint drip of water coming through the small cracks in the ceiling or of a car rumbling twelve feet above them. It was quite unnerving to say the least.

"The shit is really going the fan with this movie." Evey said as she unlocked the 'front' door to the Gallery.

"I'm sure all the die-hards won't mind if they've read the book."

Just as he had. Multiple times.

The book hadn't been quite the revelation he had been looking for; Evey had explicitly stated in the forward that V's identity was of that of the English people and nothing more. It was a dead-end to his investigation, but still insightful nonetheless as he was dead certain that V's identity would die with her.

Now he was once again enveloped in the foe that he had come to respect's lair, filled with now celebrated instead of blacklisted materials. There were many empty spaces here now; Evey had made sure that the art would slowly trickle back into English society. Some of it was even on loan at the faux-Gallery set as she would not allow another being to enter the Gallery, let alone a film crew.

The slightest film of dust coated the piano, "Don't come down here much, do you?"

"Maybe once every other week or so." She looked up at him, "Oh don't worry about it, that thing is just the worst dust magnet." Finch's eyes roamed along the walls of the Gallery as the fridge door slammed shut in the small kitchenette just off the center hall. Then he came face to face with one of the most macabre things he had seen in his entire life as a copper.

An antique suit of armor. With bullets in it's breastplate.

He remembered that particular artifact well; he had found the bloodied thing just around the corner from Creedy and Sutler. Fifty-seven dents pocked the surface where Creedy's men had shot him from less than twenty feet away. Then there were the twelve shots from Creedy himself that managed to pierce the steel altogether. Finch counted four fatal shots, all to V's lungs, yet he still managed to snap Creedy's neck and walk the kilometer back to the train.

Looking at the suit, he wondered if giving the piece of armor back to Evey had been a mistake. At the time it had been best solution to get rid of it besides throwing it into the Thames, yet the grief she was sure to feel was almost palpable as he handed it to her all those years ago. It was not unlike presenting Dominic's wife with the flag that had been draped over his casket; the same flag now resting above her fireplace alongside Dominic's service picture.

"How'd you do it Evey?" He said as he touched the polished metal, talking more to himself than to her, "How'd you make it go away?"

She walked up behind him and handed him a beer from a case she had bought after leaving the set. "I waited it out. Occupied myself. Stayed away from here."

"But it never really does go away, does it?"

"No."

He took a long swig, staring at his distorted reflection. "Poor Celia."

"Yeah." She grabbed his arm and directed him away from the armor and towards the living room, more for her sake than his. "The worst is the little things."

He sat down on the sofa next to her, sinking deep into the leather. "I beg your pardon?"

"Those first few days that I walked through here, I was constantly finding little personal things. I would go in the bathroom and find his toothbrush. If I went into his room I would find his bed unmade and some clothes in his laundry hamper. Just those little things would undo me every time." She sniffed a bit in the end.

He gave a sideways glance towards her. "I didn't mean to be a burden, Evey."

She waved him off, "You're not a burden at all. Dominic was your partner, hell, he was basically your son." Sipping her own beer, he noticed a glint on her finger.

"Fletcher finally did it then, did he?" Secretly, he was more impressed that she had said yes after being so attached to V.

"Yeah. Day after Dom's funeral, actually."

_Ouch_. "Where's the bugger now?"

She narrowed her eyes at him a fraction. Finch did care much for the new Labour Party, but would readily take them of the New Tories any day. "That 'bugger' is trying to reinstate our Godforsaken country back into the UN."

"I mean that in a completely innocent and fatherly way." He said, though he enjoyed winding her up just for the hell of it. At least it could take his mind off Dominic for a while.

They fell silent for a while, the TV playing softly in the background. It was a re-run of the final Dietrich's half hour show; perhaps the only show that the public had enjoyed during Norsefire's reign of terror. He had seen that particular episode probably a hundred times already, so his attention gravitated towards the original copy of Evey's book.

"Go ahead and ask."

"I beg your-" Oh. So she _had_ seen him staring at it.

"You ask the question every time we meet, Eric."

"And every time I get a different answer." He snapped back.

"All your answers are in that book, Eric. Read the acknowledgements." She proffered the book to him.

He almost thought to tell that he had read the book cover-to-cover eighteen times, but knew that would sound just a bit odd, so he took the book and read the acknowledgements aloud instead.

'_In honor of two dramatic brothers, two coppers, two parents, and two million lives claimed by the Reclamation.'_

All right. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Was this another 'he was a victim of the Reclamation' garbage? No, surely she would have given him more importance than one in two million. Two coppers. Him and Dom. The two parents were obviously her own. But then there were 'two dramatic brothers.'

"You honestly expect me to know who the hell these 'two dramatic brothers' are?"

"You know both of them, Eric. All you need to do is name one of them. Then you'll know who V was." _Time to put on your thinking cap inspector_, she thought.

"That's damn near impossible, Evey. Is this 'brother' even alive?"

"No. And that's it for hints. You're a copper, you can figure it out." She shrugged, going back to watching Dietrich's Half Hour Show studio band play Yakety Sax as the two Sutler look-alikes chased each other around the set.

Who did he know that was dramatic _and_ dead? He thought instantly of the sod Prothero. He always had the flair for drama, so long as he was at the center of it. Could he have tortured his own brother at the camps, though? Yes, but that certainly didn't seem the nature of the relationship the way Evey had worded it. That particular revelation struck many names from his mental list; obviously V had been on good terms with whom ever this 'brother' had been.

"Evey."

"No."

Could his brother have been a writer? Finch tried to think of any writers he might have met, preferably black-bagged ones, but could think of none. Come to think of it, he really hadn't read much of anything in life, so writers were out of the question.

Who has he met that's now dead? Dominic, most of the Norsefire cabinet, Gordon Dietrich, the Flash Gordon actor who died in a stunt accident…what was his name? Come to think of it, Dietrich wasn't even listed as deceased, just 'missing,' though after five years and the stunt he had pulled, everyone knew otherwise. Poor bugger.

Finch thought for a minute. Gordon had always been a close acquaintance, had he ever mentioned having a brother? Come to think of it, he never mentioned much of his personal life, let alone family or friends. Had he ever known V, even if he hadn't known that it was V?

Evey looked over at him, noticing his triumphant smirk as he finished off his bottle and sat it down on the coffee table beside the manuscript.

"Have you completed your investigation, Inspector?"

"I think so."

* * *

><p><strong>Finito<strong>

**R&R if you want the alternate epilogue. ;)**


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